Health Care System

“Clintons Piecing Together Reforms in Health Care” (June 8) told of the piecemeal approach to improving health coverage that the president is pursuing. I believe him when he says, “It is high time that our health plans treat all Americans equally.”

Unfortunately, I believe he missed the boat in 1994 when he failed to take on the insurance companies and shoot for the government as the single payer for health care. As long as insurance companies take a share of the profits in health care, we’ll be faced with 43 million Americans with no health coverage and escalating costs.

It is not sufficiently noted that at the time of the Clintons’ health fiasco, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) had 70 signatures in Congress for a bill that would have made the government the single payer for health care. It is an idea whose time has come, but as things stand, it cannot get the public discussion it deserves.

EDWARD HANDMAN

Laguna Woods